


Being Hunted By Time (Part I)

by thebookofnights



Series: Partially Stars [6]
Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: M/M, PTA Meeting, Typical Night Vale Violence, Typical Night Vale Weirdness, the phone call
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-02
Updated: 2019-02-02
Packaged: 2019-10-20 19:49:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17628581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebookofnights/pseuds/thebookofnights
Summary: Later on, when it’s all over and things have returned to the closest approximation of normal that Night Vale ever has to offer, he’ll write it all down.When it’s all on paper, laid out neatly, in both chronological orderandthe order in which it happened, Carlos will read it, and remember it, and finally conclude that he’s certain no important detail, no possible key to the situation, has been left out.But it will still be hard to believe it happened at all.





	Being Hunted By Time (Part I)

_He drifts back to awareness at a hazy point between the research team’s camp and the road._

_Behind him somewhere, the little circle of tents on the bluff at the edge of Hidden Gorge. Ahead of him somewhere, the tar-colored ribbon of Route 800. Destination and point of origination both human intrusions into the shifting landscape of the Sand Wastes, eerie simply because of their solid, if temporary, permanence._

_And Carlos, a tiny satellite shunted away from its original orbit, swallowed up and drifting in the impossibilities that make Night Vale what it is... isn’t he also an intrusion, and a very human one? And gone perhaps just as soon?_

_As soon as the last syllable of the Voice fades away?_

_He’s in among a stand of huge cacti, saguaro with massive, ramified branches like the fists of giants, when it falls over him. He can hear the reedy sounds of birds nearby, but that shadow is far too big to be a bird. And entirely the wrong shape._

_Footsteps behind him. He turns reflexively, already wincing in anticipation of having his face torn off or his feet knocked out from under him — but no attack comes. The person at the corner of his eye has slipped away into the sparse shadows, quick as a fox — just a flash of startling brilliant green to mark their passage. But there’s a small object lying in the disturbed sand at the base of a nearby cactus... something left behind._

_A heavy, slow feeling is stealing into his limbs, pressing lazily down on him like contentment, like terror._

_Carlos swallows, throat suddenly parched, and takes a cautious step closer. This particular saguaro is so big that it would take four people his size to reach around it holding hands. The blood spattered against at the base of its thick hide is scarlet in contrast, luminous and almost pretty, the way bright red flowers are pretty. The small object is coated with blood-matted sand and he can’t tell what it is, only that its shape reminds him of the highway ahead — a twisted strip of some material._

_He tries to scream when_ something _takes hold of him from behind, but all that escapes from his dry throat is a noise like a rusty door hinge._

_The_ something _is not pleased. It tightens its grip._

Silence _, it breathes at his ear. He can sense it bowed over him, gaunt and impossible and giving off a crackling, brightdark energy like static electricity._ We are not the only ones who watch.

_He needs to say something. He needs to say something fast, even if it’s just that he doesn’t understand. He tries. No use; his throat is a dry socket. Manages a nod, instead._

Listen now, _the_ something _whispers. Its — fingers? talons? the claws of its wings? — rest on his shoulders, soft and implacable._ This is the first sign of a transgression against nature. Here you see only the meat of it, the tip of its tooth. You will know when you see the whole.

_“H-how... when...?” He’s stammering, each syllable scraped out and shaking. He remembers the first time he saw an angel — and now he knows what the_ something _is, why his mind shied away from naming it — in the front yard of Old Woman Josie’s house, down by the car lot. He’d shed tears then, too._

When you do, you must act. _The angel nods; he hears the rustle of its motion._ Or we shall all be lost along with you.

_Carlos closes his eyes. It takes an effort; moisture spills hotly from under the lids. His head aches. “Why... me?”_

_No reply. He gets the strong impression that the angel is rolling its many eyes at him. Then it’s gone, and that deep-sea pressure along with it, and he’s no longer a witness to anything holy, but just a man standing in a desert with his eyes closed._

Dreaming _he’s standing in a desert with his eyes closed._

_Wait._

_What?_

_Where is he, again?_

_Is he asleep?_

 

“Are you _asleep?”_ Rochelle Walters is demanding.

Alerted with a jerk so sudden that the passenger’s side seatbelt is catalyzed into crash-response tightness, Carlos doesn’t reply beyond a surprised fit of coughing. Chelle puts the brake on immediately, coasting the candy-red Prius to a neat stop. She attacks the seatbelt fastener, unhooking it on the second attempt, and steadies him, a worried hand on his shoulder. The car’s seatbelt alert promptly goes off: _bing, bing, bing._

“Dude, do _not_ scare me like that. I should’ve listened to Halland.”

“What — did Dave — ?” Interrupted by another cough, Carlos gives up on speaking for a moment.

“Oh, he told me not to let you doze off. I thought he was joking when he said you might start screaming. Damn.” Chelle waits until the second fit passes for good, and then she lets go of him — cautious, untethering motion, like casting off a boat. Keeps her foot cautiously on the brake pedal.

Catching his breath, “Oh. That.”

“Yeah. _That,”_ burlesquing his tone. “I guess I can’t say I’m surprised, I mean, I’ve been here for like two weeks now, and you’ve had dark circles under your eyes the whole time.”

“Oh, God, have I?” Carlos pushes his glasses back up on his nose to bring the mirror on the sun visor into focus. She’s right, at least right now: he _does_ have dark circles under his eyes. His reflection looks fragile in a way he didn’t expect, as if the man in the mirror has committed separate sins that have come looking for him while Carlos wasn’t paying attention.

And he’s forgotten to shave again. This day is not going well.

“Listen,” he says, trying to salvage the moment, “it’s my fault. I didn’t think to warn you. I must’ve forgotten my sleeping pills last night.”

She frowns thoughtfully. “What is it? Night terrors? PTSD? ’Cause I’m gonna tell you now, sleeping pills won’t help with _that_ shit. They’ll make it worse.”

“No, nothing like that, just. Insomnia. Sometimes nightmares. That’s all.”

“‘That’s all’?” Chelle demands. “‘That’s all’? Dude. You know that saying, ‘you look like you’ve seen a ghost’? I could never imagine for real what that would look like, until just now. You’ve got a — a witness look, a crime scene look. Bees in the bathtub and bloody writing all over the walls, _that_ kind of look. You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Or worse.”

“It _can_ be awful,” he admits softly, wincing at the understatement. “But the dreams are — I can’t really — I can’t talk about it. I didn’t mean for you to see that. I’m sorry.”

_“You’re_ sorry? You’re apologizing to _me_ ?” Chelle scoffs, but her expression has softened from sharp concern into a friendly exasperation. “That is so — so — _Carlos_ of you. I swear, MASH, you have got a serious case of chivalry poisoning.”

Carlos can’t help a relieved smile. Chelle dubbed him “Mysterious and Strange Hero” before she knew his real name; if she’s calling him by that silly, spur-of-the-moment acronym, that means they’re okay again. It’s her most common method of address, although she’s also picked up the other scientists’ habit of just calling him “boss.” If he cared about professionalism the way Phil Kirk does, Chelle would be driving him distracted. But it seems beyond ridiculous to insist on workplace formality in a town where daybreak makes an actual breaking sound, car thefts are attributed to feral dogs or five-headed dragons, and perfectly harmless things — like pens, wheat products, and wearing knitted hats on Tuesdays — are banned by the terrifying and otherworldly group-mind that is the Night Vale City Council.

He takes his time about settling back into the passenger seat. Runs his fingers through the untidy strands of his hair, trying for a soothing deep breath. “It’s okay,” he tells her. “Really. I do have methods to cope. It looks worse than it is.”

“If you say so.” Chelle’s expression is still skeptical, but she finally shrugs and switches her foot to the accelerator, pulling the car back from the sandy shoulder and onto the tarmac of Route 800. Silence for a moment, then, “If you change your mind, I mean, if you wanna talk about it, I’ll be around.”

“Thanks,” Carlos says, touched.

He wishes momentarily that it was safe to take her up on her offer. That he could tell someone the whole thing. The visions. The strange metaphors. Everything that’s come true, everything that hasn’t. That he could tell someone about the Voice in his head.

Except it would sound insane. Even here, it would sound insane.

Besides, when he’s dreaming, the Voice is _his._

Awake, he has to share it with everyone else. With the unknown multitude of people who tune in to NVCR every day. With anyone who talks to Cecil Palmer, whether it’s on the phone, on air, or in line at the post office. Cecil’s consuming passion, when it’s not a monologue, is a conversation. He seems to love asking questions as much as he loves answering them; he shows as much interest in a child’s story about her day at school as he does in the history of his beloved town. _When the Grim Reaper arrives at the radio station to collect his immortal soul,_ Carlos thinks savagely, _Cecil will probably sweet-talk it into giving him an interview first._

It puts Carlos on edge, makes him stupidly jealous in a way he’s not used to. There’s something intimate about the way Cecil talks on the air. Deliberate, gentle, bold, as if he’s warmly aware of a singular listener, despite always addressing the entire town. And maybe Cecil’s never mentioned another crush, another name, but Carlos just doesn’t believe he can be the only one who’s in love, the only one who imagines that Voice whispering in his ear, privately, secretly, saying things like — things like —

— oh, damn it, not a _gain._

He seizes the first non-Cecil topic he can think of. “What time is it?”

“Dunno, but my phone’s in the cupholder thing.”

Chelle still hasn’t replaced the phone she dropped on the day she arrived in Night Vale, the one with the broken screen. He’s offered to pay for a new one, still feeling responsible for the Director’s abduction of her, the brutal uprooting of her former life, but all she’ll say that it isn’t about money. That, he can understand. He wore the same cheap digital watch for nearly five years, after all, and only Night Vale was capable of causing him to lose it.

For perhaps the millionth time, he runs the morning of January fifteenth wistfully back in his head, trying to pinpoint the moment he misplaced the watch, but as usual, it’s a fruitless exercise. Picks up Chelle’s phone instead. Peering through the web of jagged cracks on the display, he lingers on the clean spareness of the glowing text: _5:32; Friday, February 1._

_That’s all right, then,_ trying to make himself sound as much like himself as possible. Just Carlos talking to himself, just a normal person’s voice.

If he can even be considered a normal person anymore. Especially with that dream still coiled in the back of his head like a venomous snake.

“Chelle?”

“Yo, boss.”

“What do you think normal people do? Like, for fun, when they aren’t in danger?” He rubs the back of his neck, anxious. “I don’t — I don’t mean to be insulting, I just can’t remember.”

Chelle doesn’t laugh. “Yeah,” she says, without obvious irony. “Me either.”

 

Later on, when it’s all over and things have returned to the closest approximation of _normal_ that Night Vale ever has to offer, he’ll write it all down.

When it’s all on paper, laid out neatly, in both chronological order _and_ the order in which it happened, Carlos will read it, and remember it, and finally conclude that he’s certain no important detail, no possible key to the situation, has been left out.

But it will still be hard to believe it happened at all.

 

Chelle drops Carlos outside the Ralph’s and drives off in the direction of the lab with a cheerful wave, as if to declare the subject of the nightmares officially dropped for now. Carlos waves back, an invisible weight lifting from his shoulders.

They agreed on the way that Chelle would go and collect the inevitable few things the team forgot when they originally left for Hidden Gorge, and Carlos would wait in the grocery store parking lot for Eli Hirsch, who’s even more than usually late for work and still stubbornly refuses to get his own car.

Carlos’s grad student intern is unfailingly reliable — that is, when it comes to cryptology, or security, or the complicated rotating schedule of takeout orders they’ve come up with for lunch at the lab. With purely mundane tasks, he’s hopeless. On one memorable occasion, Carlos sent him out with the grocery list for the week, and he came back with two packages of #5 screws, a cup of Pinkberry’s frozen yogurt, three CDs, an illegible (but quite clearly annoyed) Post-it note that Michelle Nguyen, the owner of nearby music store Dark Owl Records, had stuck to the back of his T-shirt, and nothing whatsoever that could be described as grocery-related.

So Carlos wasn’t exactly surprised when Eli’s _sorry, I got distracted again, 6:00 at the usual place?_ text showed up on his phone. At least the intern has finally started to text, instead of just calling and hanging up. Or leaving secret notes in the refrigerator. It’s a step in the right direction.

“The usual place” is within sight of the Ralph’s entrance, close enough that Carlos can hear the automatic doors hiss open and shut, the footsteps of people walking past, but far enough away that he can get away with smoking a cigarette while he waits. The shadow of the building falls obligingly over him as he leans against the wall, next to a wooden bench. If anyone ever asks why he chose this particular spot, he can always say it’s because of the bench. Which, really, it is. He might need to sit down _sometime,_ even if he hasn’t so far. That’s only practical. This is an entirely practical choice.

It has nothing to do with the way you can see the radio tower down the hill in the close distance, the steel lattice of it, the roofs of the cars in the station parking lot glinting in the broil of all that sun. Nothing to do with whether or not the studio window’s even visible from here, it’s so far away, and besides, no one ever opens it.

_For fuck’s sake, Carlos. You’re not even fooling yourself anymore._

Fine. If he’s going to be sentimental, he might as well go ahead and wallow in it. It’s 6:08, he’s got approximately ten minutes, and this place is public enough to make it easy to stifle his more dangerous impulses. He’s just going to stand here, like he does on every store trip. Not thinking about anything. Crisp shadows on pavement, late-afternoon traffic on the Exit 10 overpass nearby, the cinnamon-clove heat of the smoke. That’s good, that sweet, burning little catch of pain. He can see why these are Cecil’s favorite.

_Why are you not better at this?_ His conscience, petulantly. _Why can’t things just go back to the way they were — no ridiculous grandiose crushes, not out to anyone and nothing you couldn’t handle?_

He lets the last breath of smoke out slowly, fine dark-red haze like a dissolving veil between himself and the daylight. The sense of peace he’d felt moments ago is slipping away, and anyway Eli will be here soon. Time to stop daydreaming, before he gets too involved in something that’ll only lead to trouble.

It’s at that exact moment, as if to illustrate the perversity of the universe, that the huge winged thing swoops down from above the building, setting off a cacophony of screams from the parking lot around him.

 

Carlos catches a glimpse of a mantle of dark, feathery fur, elongated jaws yawning, a bone-needle nest of teeth. He drops groundward, the screams chilling his blood despite the heat. If that thing thinks he looks tasty, he’s probably dead; his folding utility knife would be awfully inadequate against something with a thick protected hide, and he isn’t carrying anything else he could use as a weapon, not even his car keys.

He lands roughly; he’s going to have bruises. The concrete tile of the sidewalk is scorching against the palms of his hands as he breaks his fall and rolls. Sunlight floods his vision fiercely the moment he’s unwise enough to look up, and seriously, _has_ he been living in the desert for nearly a year without getting photochromic lenses, or even a cheap pair of sunglasses? He needs to do something about that later, assuming he doesn’t die.

He shades his eyes, breathless, in time to track the thing’s distorted triangular shadow as it swoops down.

It’s far too big to be a bird. And entirely the wrong shape.

The huge flying thing that absolutely can’t possibly be a pterodactyl abandons its wide, lazy circle to dive onto its chosen prey.

Scattered screams from people here and there in the parking lot. Cruel claws hook onto the arm of a woman with glasses, who is trying to crawl under the nearest car. She screams too. Carlos squeezes his eyes shut, shocked reflex, not wanting to see someone carried away like a rabbit seized by an owl — but a moment later they snap open again as something collides with the creature. A person swinging something — a metal bar? — two-handed like a hammer. A horrible hollow meaty impact. Then a voice Carlos knows is yelling up at the creature as it screeches again.

Lets go.

And then it’s gone, scarily fast, leaving its victim crumpled on the pavement.

The woman’s flower-printed hijab is spattered with blood, but Carlos can see that she’s still alive, dazed but resilient. He pushes himself to his feet. Closes the distance as fast as he can.

Before he gets there, Eli has already dropped his improvised weapon and is kneeling down earnestly to help her put pressure on the wound.

 

Carlos is ridiculously glad to see Eli. So glad that he manages to shove the impulse to lecture him like a distracted parent firmly to the back of his mind.

Eli seems completely unharmed, anyway. He’s awkwardly but speedily shrugging out of his soft green hoodie one arm at a time, so he can tie it around the woman’s shoulder. The new yellow T-shirt underneath reads _i’m sure everyone thinks i’m paranoid_ , the lowercase letters dotted with cartoon eyes. Only Eli can manage to look cheerful and reassuring with his hands covered in blood. Unfortunately, the real question isn’t where he found a heavy baseball bat — or even where he found the courage to throw himself into battle with a creature nearly twice his size — but why he’s being trailed by two members of the Sheriff’s Secret Police, leather balaclavas pulled back from their sun-weathered faces.

Even in the aftermath of chaos, Carlos clocks them, with that instinct that felt ancient to him even long ago, when he was still mistrustfully approaching the borders of adulthood. It turns within him like a separate thing, pulsing out blue-red flashes of submerged panic.

Worsens, when he arrives at the side of the unfortunate woman to find that he knows one of them personally.

Officer Ben Kosinski has only recently been restored to his former status as a Secret Police lieutenant. The botched search for notorious criminal Hiram McDaniels, last July, got him censured by the Sheriff and reassigned to Animal Control, the least glamorous municipal department in Night Vale. He had already been unstable, but that made him obsessed. His professional behavior became more and more reckless, and his private vices (according to Big Rico’s gossip, at least) more and more consuming. Only Hiram’s unexpected recapture rescued his career from its downward arc, and he’d apparently given up hope by the time the anonymous tip came in. Why he should blame Carlos for the dragon’s escape in the first place is still a mystery.

After all, he can’t possibly have any _evidence_ , can he? Nobody saw.

Eli and Ben notice Carlos’s arrival at the same moment and with opposite reactions that would be entertaining under different circumstances; the Secret Policeman looks nearly constipated with disapproval, while the intern lights up with relieved welcome. Their greetings overlap in contrast, “Carlos!” and Ben demands, “What are you doing here?”

“Shopping,” Carlos says, mildly. “At least, I was about to be.”

“So this isn’t some _experiment_ of yours? You have _no idea_ where that thing came from?” Suspiciously.

“No idea. Are you all right, ma’am?”

“I think so,” and the woman smiles, wide-eyed and dreamy with shock. “It’s not so bad. I can walk, I think. In a minute.”

Carlos smiles back, bending down to retrieve her glasses. Ben continues to stare as he hands them to her. Miraculously uncracked. “What’s your name?”

“Latifa.” She settles the glasses back onto her nose, her non-injured arm shaky but functional. Eli’s old green hoodie, tied tightly around her shoulder, is already soaked with blood. “Don’t worry, I’m sure the hospital will give me something for the pain. So long as it’s not wintergreen mints again. I just like the barbecue sauce flavor so much better. So you’re Carlos? Your hair really _is_ perfect,” she adds wistfully.

“Thanks,” trying not to sigh. It’s always awkward when people say it — not because he hates his hair _that_ much, even half-grown-out and precisely the length to fall into his eyes, no matter what he does with it — but because he can’t help but hear the Voice echo the phrase, Cecil sounding lovestruck and nervous and sweet. Can’t help but wonder what it _is_ about his hair that Cecil likes so much. If it’s just some aesthetic thing, or if the radio host ever imagines winding his fingers into it, pulling just hard enough to hurt, tipping Carlos’s head back and —

— and here he is thinking about Cecil _again,_ instead of the situation at hand.

This is going to literally get him killed one of these days.

_Better think about all this blood, instead, because it could’ve been yours — or Eli’s, for that matter._

He pushes back to his feet again, glancing up at the late-afternoon sky as if he’s got nothing worse to worry about than the weather. No sign of the thing coming back. Without looking at Ben’s face, “I have a schedule to keep today, Officer. I hope you’re not planning to detain us?”

An audible scowl. “I might be.”

“It’ll be a waste of your time as much as mine, but I’ll cooperate. I always cooperate with the Secret Police, don’t I?”

Eli, helping Latifa to get up, shoots a half-amused, half-concerned look at Carlos, then gives his head a tiny shake and says nothing. The second Secret Policeman shifts his weight nervously. He might be remembering the last time the Sheriff requested Carlos’s cooperation. The City Council probably hasn’t bothered to explain why they had Carlos arrested in the first place, much less why they released him again with all his fingers and all his faculties. Nobody feels comfortable with what _that_ implies. Ben’s partner is clearly hoping he’ll let it go.

Vain hope. Ben grits his teeth, still focused on Carlos with the intensity of a guard dog whose territory has been disturbed. “Past performance,” he recites with a Miranda-warning edge in his tone, “is not a predictor of future results.”

“And correlation does not imply causation,” Carlos flings back, conscious of the increments of temper slipping through his grasp. “You know Eli hasn’t done anything wrong. As usual. And I want you to leave my team alone. Seriously, don’t you have better things to do than follow us around? Isn’t it your job to keep Night Vale _safe?”_

“Exactly,” says Ben, with grim relish. “It _is_ my job to keep Night Vale safe. It may even be my job to keep Night Vale safe from _you.”_

Carlos blinks. Tries to frame a response more telling and articulate than a disbelieving stare. Fails. Tries again, too late. Whatever he would have said is abruptly drowned out by the rising blare of the Old Town sirens.

 

No one hesitates.

Carlos can already hear the rasp of the creatures’ wings on the air as he catches up Latifa in a hasty fireman’s carry. Both Secret Policemen draw and fire their weapons skyward, scattering crackling purple sparks around their feet. The baseball bat makes a little metallic _brrring_ against the concrete as Eli snatches it up. There are screams from the nearby crowd, but no stragglers. Living in Night Vale teaches haste in an emergency.

They run for the doors of the grocery store.

Five breaths — _one,_ he’s aware of a pulsebeat in the hollow of his throat — _two,_ the creatures’ shadows falling over them like fighter planes in formation — _three,_ so close, the doors are sliding squeakily open — _four,_ a noise like a savage curtainfall punctuated by a human shriek — _five,_ and they’re all spilling in, stumbling, catching at each other to keep from losing their balance on the white tiles. Minus at least one.

Ben spins back as the last person — his partner, face again covered — passes by him and into relative safety. He yells a battlecry. Fires again, a violet gout of flame splashing into the face of a diving creature. Its thrashing, dying body comes close to crashing into the midst of them anyway, still burning, but the heavy steel security door falls down first.

The impact of the creature shakes the door, but it holds.

Surrounded by cursing, breath-catching people, Eli and Carlos meet each other’s eyes with relief. Eli’s still clutching the baseball bat. Carlos doesn’t let go of his burden either, until Latifa taps his arm politely. She has to reach awkwardly around with her good hand to do it. “Could you put me down?”

“Sorry. Are you okay?”

“Jarred my shoulder a little bit, but. Yeah. Okay. I don’t think this is slipping.” She indicates the bulky makeshift bandage with her chin as Carlos lowers her gently to the floor, a prudent distance away from a produce stand labeled _DEFANGED LETTUCES $0.80 ea_. The blood on the fabric is crusting, but none of them can be sure how deep the wound really is, or what internal damage it might hide. Latifa winces at the shared thought, but only looks up at him with an exhausted serenity, reaches out to squeeze his hand. “Thank you so much. Carlos. Eli. Both of you.”

“Of course,” Carlos says. Presses tired fingers to his forehead, trying to dislodge the ache settling in behind his eyes.

“Hey,” Eli adds, “at least it’s air-conditioned in here.”

 

Adam Bayes, the manager of the Ralph’s, has a habit of calling 911 the minute he notices anything frightening in his store. Under the circumstances, Carlos doesn’t blame him, but he always wonders exactly how far Adam’s definition of “frightening” varies from his own.

The Ralph’s might not be the most dangerous place in town, but it isn’t remotely safe, either. The stockroom door sometimes leads to places other than the stockroom, often including the poisoned depths of Radon Canyon. It’s possible to waste hours staring in fascination at the displays of absolute nothingness in the section labeled _garden tools_ . Some of the produce has to be chained down to the bins, and in extreme cases, muzzled. And then there’s Aisle 3, which is constantly on fire. The flame never dies down or consumes the shelves it feeds on, and it’s routine to see shoppers carrying burning torches with dangling _$15.00_ price tags, held carefully out to one side so the wax doesn’t drip down into their grocery carts.

Despite Carlos’s obvious stunned reaction during his first visit to the store, his reputation for _fixing_ things has made an impression on Adam. Night Vale in general seems to have changed its mind about him. Instead of muttering about the flighty natures of scientists — or largely ignoring him, which, to be honest, is what Carlos would prefer — its citizens have started actually turning to him for help in dangerous situations.

So it isn’t weird that the store manager’s calling him over, instead of the Secret Police. Just _really_ awkward. He avoids looking in their direction as he follows Adam.

Adam’s office is a small room, mostly taken up by a desk strewn with papers, stamps, a large pair of metal pliers, and several loose bloodstones. Fire hazard. The ancient, grimy clock on the wall says 6:42, but Carlos’s phone has inexplicably stopped displaying the time, something it does fairly often during the late afternoon hours, so he isn’t sure if it’s accurate.

“Hi,” he says, once again firmly nudging away the low-key panic that always brushes against the back of his mind, like a frightened cat, whenever he realizes that he doesn’t know exactly what time it is. He misses his watch, damn it. “What’s wrong?”

Adam is hauling open the door to the employee break room, which makes an odd sound with its hinges, like a muted scream.

No, wait. The sound is coming from _beyond_ the door. From something else.

A portal.

A room-wide hole in nothing that churns and gutters like a bright whirlpool, like a candle flame. More screams drift mindlessly out of the cavity of it, as if the air itself is howling at its violation. The sound is oddly blunted, damped down either by some non-Euclidean distance, or by the weight of Carlos’s shock.

Is he hallucinating this? He turns back to Adam, making sure that the store manager is seeing what he’s seeing. Adam nods. Props open the door. They stand side by side in the open doorway and stare.

It’s surreal to be just six feet away from a tear in the fabric of reality, looking critically at it as if examining an art gallery painting, or trying to decide what to get from a food truck. Carlos, head spinning with quantum equations, feels like laughing. Or crying. He’s not precisely sure which.

Finally, “What... what _is_ that? Was that there before?”

“Of course it wasn’t there before,” says Adam, irritably. “Even if I knew how, why would I put a space-and-time portal in the employee break room on purpose? Somebody would be bound to complain to OSHA, even if it _didn’t_ swallow up the whole building.”

“Oh, right. That — that would be bad.” He definitely feels like laughing now. He bites his lip to stop it. Hysterics would totally ruin his heroic new image. Not that he feels any more comfortable with it, but it _is_ useful. He really likes being able to warn people about things.

“This explains where those horrible flying dinosaur things came from,” Adam continues, jerking a thumb over his shoulder in the general direction of the store entrance. “There’s probably at least one more hole out there somewhere. And they’re gonna keep getting bigger... unless we put someone through.”

“Put someone — You’re not literally going to do that? Please tell me you’re not literally going to do that.”

“Of course not!” indignantly. “I would never sacrifice someone who worked for me. I’m a safe employer! Not to mention it would look really bad to the customers.” He wipes his hands nervously on his grocery apron. “I need your help. Well, you must know _something_ sciency that could help us, right?” at Carlos’s dubious look. “You figured out how to banish that dread spirit that was haunting the automatic checkout machines.”

“This is a lot more complicated than exact change. God, I can’t _think.”_ Carlos runs a distracted hand through his hair. “This ought to be impossible. It can’t have formed naturally, not like this. You think those creatures came through it? How positive are you?”

“Seen it before.”

“Okay, let’s hope the other end doesn’t open up into a vacuum, for now. If it does, we’re probably screwed anyway. Uh, if matter passing through will close it, can’t we just use an object? Like that folding chair, or something?”

Adam shakes his head. “No. They just eat inanimate stuff. It might even grow faster if we started feeding it furniture. It needs to be something... alive.”

Carlos paces back and forth at the margin of the room, careful not to move any closer to the portal. “I don’t want to know how you know that. Wait. What if we catch one of the creatures and put _it_ back through?”

A gape of astonishment. _“What?_ Didn’t you see the huge claws on those things? The teeth? We’d get ourselves killed!”

“Not necessarily. My team’s had some practice wrangling weird creatures by now. You could sell me some of your hunting equipment, couldn’t you? Like one of those mist-nets, or a really big trap of some kind?”

“We don’t carry traps that big! Titanic-game hunting was outlawed by the City Council, oh, years ago. You’re not gonna find anyone willing to sell you traps sized for massive extra-dimensional creatures. Unless you want to go knock on some doors over in _Desert Bluffs,_ or something.” His tone suggests that this would be akin to high treason. Carlos sighs.

“Okay, what about the Secret Police? Would they have the firepower to handle it?”

“But you don’t _get_ it, it’s the Secret Police we need to worry about.”

“Why?” Carlos stops in the middle of his restless pacing to scan the store manager’s face again. It’s bleak. A chill certainty takes hold of him. “Oh, shit. They’ve done this before, haven’t they? You think they’d cut the risk and just force the nearest person through?”

A miserable nod. “And fast. As soon as they know.”

Carlos looks back at the portal. It ripples and moves in bright facets, like water the color of nothing he’s ever seen. It makes him dizzy to keep his eyes on it. The sight of it keeps tugging at the edges of his mind, spawning theories and suppositions that he doesn’t have time to stop and examine.

“All right,” slowly, “what if _I_ went in?”

Adam smacks a hand to his forehead. “Are you out of your _mind?”_

“That portal’s being artificially created somehow. Using a _massive_ quantity of energy, so whoever or whatever is doing it is _not_ fucking around. And if those pterodactyl creatures came out in one piece, that at least suggests it won’t kill whoever goes back through. It’s a doorway, it’s being held open somehow. Isn’t a volunteer better than a victim?”

The store manager is shaking his head vehemently. “Carlos, wait. You don’t know about the portals they made a while ago for the Blood Space War? Those other scientists, the ones who were here before?”

A shiver of something like _deja vu._ Cautiously, “No...”

“Well, they really did send people through space and time. The portals worked. But not everyone arrived... unchanged. My brother was on the extraction team, and he told me —” Adam lowers his voice, leans in: _don’t repeat this_ . “He told me you have to be strong to survive the passage. The people who made it, they were the City Council’s messengers, dark magicians. People who had _seen_ things, you know?”

_A transgression against nature._ The angel’s voice from his dream, seeping back into his thoughts.

Out loud, suppressing a shiver, “Yeah. I know.”

“Everyone else — they had to be restrained, for their own safety. Reeducated. Or worse.” Adam draws a shuddering breath. “So I guess I really should have asked, do you _want_ to be out of your mind?”

Carlos puts a firm hand on Adam’s shoulder, turning him away from the portal and back to face the more comforting chaos of his office.

“Well,” he says, not bothering to hold back the grin, “it’s possible nobody would be able to tell the difference.”

 

_wtf is happening?_ demands Marianne Smithson’s text. _status? anyone?_

Chelle’s response pops up just as Carlos unlocks his phone. _siren pattern unclear. something overhead, not helis. im in lab panic room. cant see._

_Good,_ Carlos responds, _stay hidden, all of you. Eli’s with me._

_where??_

_Ralph’s. Look out for flying creatures. They’re big and purple w/feathery manes. There are at least 5 and maybe more. They look like pterodactyls but_ — stupid return button. Carlos taps impatiently at the textbox — _you know what, I’m just gonna call them pterodactyls. Also, if you see anything that looks like a weird hole in the air, observe it but do NOT go near it. I’m serious, don’t touch it and don’t get any equipment too close to it. Are you all right? Is everyone inside?_

_Dave already left. he wanted to make a start_ . A pause, then Marianne resumes, _trying to get him on radio._

_when did u see him last?_ Chelle, practical.

_I dont know. guys I dont know. my phone doesnt have the time. like 5 min I think? might be able to see from door_

_Don’t go outside, Mare._

Another pause, this one somehow electric. Then, _what about the car? Can I try the car? he cant have gone far and he’s not answering. Carlos please_

Carlos realizes he’s biting his lip again and stops. He takes in a breath, sighs it back out. He wants all of them safe, but not at the cost of something unforgivable.

Especially since he might be about to do something unforgivable himself.

_Fine. Please just don’t take any unnecessary risks. And you’d better loop Phil in, too. Wake him up. I have to step away and that means he’s in charge._

Chelle is immediately suspicious. _oh ya? wyd, boss? got a plan?_

Carlos runs one rueful finger along the edge of the touchscreen. _Yes,_ he admits, _but don’t worry. If it works, you won’t even notice I was gone._

 

Out in the grocery store’s service corridor again, Carlos turns left, aiming for the men’s restroom and a sink he can use to wash his face.

His barely contained excitement is a livewire hum in the back of his mind, giving off hard, delicious little jolts of terror whenever he touches it. About fucking time his unwanted clairvoyant gift should do something _useful_ for him. If he’s wrong — but no, he’s not wrong, he’s certain he’s not wrong.

He runs the water as cold as he can stand. Scrubs his hands as well, until he can’t see blood or grime anywhere. Turns, grimacing at his reflection in the mirror, to make sure the back of his neck is clean. There’s nothing to be done about the state of his labcoat. He’ll just have to hope he doesn’t need a sterile environment today.

Lying to his team always makes him feel guilty. It used to be so easy to lie, when there wasn’t anyone who expected truth from him. Maybe his old life doesn’t deserve his nostalgia, but —

Suddenly there’s another shape in the mirror. Before he can completely turn again, it’s on top of him. A contemptuous shove, and he stumbles back, catching his balance only by old reflex. The thick porcelain edge of the sink stops him from going over altogether, in exchange for one more bruise.

Nostalgia, indeed.

Ben is looking down at Carlos as if they’ve already skipped the argument and the detainment and the one-way-mirror interrogation, and arrived at the point where his superiors carefully forget to check the surveillance tapes afterward.

His eyes are as distant and merciless as a noon sky. Nice eyes, actually, Carlos muses. If they weren’t perpetually bloodshot and narrowed in suspicion, they’d be quite striking. Picturesque and a little haunting. He’s always had a weakness for things like that, for the contrast between something fragile and something violent. Witness maybe five thousand tiny high-school crushes on the same bullies he’d happily have punched in the face, given the chance. The tempering of fear with something that cut even finer.

And now he’s paying for it, isn’t he? That same breathless aching indulgence distilled into sound, into a Voice whispering in his ear. Pathetic — the guy so firmly in control of himself that he rarely even lets his crushes know his _name,_ head over heels for someone who sighs it on public radio like a schoolboy. _Alas, poor Carlos! I knew him, Horatio._

All of a sudden he can’t keep his gravity. He sees the blow coming an instant too late, but the pain that blooms hotly in his left shoulder only makes the temptation to laugh irresistible. It’s the same shoulder he’s injured several times now — in fact, the bruises from two weeks ago are still there, or were, the last time he checked. He flexes his fingers experimentally, relieved when they respond without so much as a twitch. Is he getting used to this? Fuck.

“Hey,” he manages, through the laughter, “aren’t you going to _say_ something? What, did you forget your lines?”

Another swing, an uncoordinated but savage roundhouse. Carlos ducks quickly away from it, just barely managing to avoid being grazed.

Realizes, with another sharp electric little jolt, that he’s furious.

The pain has a metallic adrenaline edge to it, a taste in his mouth that makes him want to laugh again. Or drive his teeth into something. It holds him helpless for a moment, pulling air back into his lungs like he’s drunk on it. That bright hard spark at the center of him reignited, a feeling that can almost be contained in an equation.

He ought to be terrified. He’s seen the Secret Police do so many brutal things that he can’t explain, and so many other brutal things that are even worse because they’re totally commonplace. But this is weird. Why isn’t Ben using any of the weapons he’s carrying? Why isn’t he invoking the City Council’s powers? Why is he the only one here, starting a fistfight in a bathroom, when he could be calling for backup just by pressing a button or intoning a guttural chant?

Even if he thinks Carlos is really that dangerous, he has to assume that one unarmed, untrained civilian couldn’t hold his own against an entire squad of policemen in body armor. Right?

It’s scary because it doesn’t make any sense, but this time Carlos doesn’t freeze up the way he did when this same hulking man showed up at his door to arrest him. That memory slips ominously but harmlessly over his mind, like the shadow of a passing helicopter, and leaves a scrim of hard-packed anger in its place.

He feints left as if he’s about to break away and run, and then uses the opening for a right hook, quick and vicious. He was famous for that one, once: impossible not to feel a little trickle of pride. Ben doesn’t quite go over, but he staggers back, clutching his jaw and emitting a growl unpleasantly reminiscent of whatever lives in the dog park.

“Talk to me,” Carlos says. His voice comes out calm, almost sweet. His knuckles are stinging. “Tell me what this is _about._ ”

Hesitating long enough to speak was a mistake. Ben slams forward, using his weight in an attempt to knock Carlos over. Carlos yelps at the impact. Trips him. They’re both falling when everything defocuses into a blur. Carlos barely has time to hope his glasses are in one piece before he hits the ground abruptly for the second time today.

Then, before he can scramble up, his attacker goes suddenly limp.

Carlos stares as the smeary shape that is Ben folds bonelessly onto the floor.

“Hey,” Eli says cheerfully, from somewhere above and behind him. “Sorry it took me so long to get here.”

Carlos drags himself over to inspect the unconscious Ben, leaning close to see without his glasses. Sure enough, there’s a powder-blue dermal patch adhering to the back of the Secret Policeman’s exposed neck.

He sighs, half in relief and half in exasperation. “Damn it, Eli, I thought I told you to get rid of those tranquilizers.”

“I _am_ getting rid of them,” aggrieved. “I only have a few doses left!” An experimental tug at Ben’s booted foot. “Jeez, this guy’s heavy. We’ll have to drag him. You okay, boss?”

The fury is gone, slipping back into its subliminal lair, and in its wake Carlos feels tired, and fragile, and entirely himself again.

He closes his eyes. Closes a tentative hand around his glasses. Like Latifa’s glasses earlier, they also seem miraculously unharmed. Must be his lucky day.

“Yeah,” he says, “I’m all right.”

 

Adam is waiting for them impatiently, actually wringing his hands. Carlos has never seen anyone do that in real life.

Eli reacts to the sight of the portal much like Carlos did — stilling with fascination, jaw slightly dropped, visible calculations flashing past behind an intent stare. After a long moment, voice smoothed soft with wonder, “Boss, what _is_ this? What are we doing?”

Carlos lets Ben’s unconscious body slide to the floor again, breathing hard. Ben’s maybe three times as heavy as Latifa was, and his shoulder is probably going to hate him for the rest of his life. However long that turns out to be.

He stands up again, with an effort, and pulls off Ben’s bandolier: Batman’s utility belt, as envisioned by some evil genius with a complete lack of ethics. He runs his eyes over it longingly, wishing he had the time to stop and examine it thoroughly. Then he sets it down on the surface of the small paper mountain occupying most of Adam’s desk, where it starts to give off a sullen, metallic glow.

“It’s okay, I promise, but I have to leave him here. Adam, hang on to his gear as long as you can, and don’t give it back to him until this is over. Something’s wrong with him. He’s got about a thousand different deadly weapons in here, and he just attacked me with his bare hands. And I don’t think the City Council knows what he’s doing.”

Adam looks from the desk to Carlos, and then from Carlos to the desk. “But the Secret Police — what do I say — ?”

“You won’t be in danger, Eli can stay with you, until I —”

“Until you —” Eli spins around, outraged. “Fuck _that,_ I’m not letting you just walk into that thing, I’m _not._ I’ll jump in after you, fucking try me, you can’t leave like this, I — we need you, we all need you. How are we supposed to solve anything without you? Did you even tell the others what you’re doing?”

“Eli —”

_“Damn_ it, Carlos.” He sits down, cross-legged on the floor like an exhausted child, and puts both hands over his face. Carlos has never heard him sound so close to a sob.

“Eli. Hey. Listen.” Putting a gentle hand on the intern’s shoulder. “Someone has to go through, or it’ll keep growing. Maybe spawn others. There might be others already. And the Secret Police will put someone else through. Someone who might not be able to survive it.”

“And you think _you’ll_ be able to survive it because why, exactly?”

“Because,” Carlos says, “I’ve... seen things.”

Eli looks up, startled, eyes brimming. Whatever he sees in Carlos’s expression appears to steady him. He sniffs back the tears, wipes his face briskly with one hand. “Huh. Really? How’d you find all this out?”

Carlos nods his head toward Adam, who still looks guilty.

Eli is already taut with an urgent new idea. “Do you have to be conscious to go through?”

“I don’t... I don’t know.”

“Well,” Eli says, “let’s do an experiment, then.”

 

They stop to make the site for the patch sterile this time. Eli rolls his eyes but doesn’t push it, since he’s getting his way over Carlos’s objections.

Eli has never disobeyed an order before, but from the thin line of his mouth, it’s easy to tell that he’ll disobey this one. Do exactly as he threatened and dive in after Carlos, whether it’s safe for him or not. And if Carlos leaves him behind, their bizarre but fulfilling professional relationship will be over as soon as Eli regains consciousness. The thought of losing the intern, in either sense, makes his chest tighten painfully.

Resigned, “You know this is blackmail.”

“I know.” Eli smiles up beatifically from his supine position. He turns his arm up so Carlos can reach his wrist. “Gonna be worth it, though.”

“Not if I lose you,” Carlos says. “You’re not replaceable. Besides,” trying for a lighter tone as he applies the patch, “I’d never be able to decode your notes.”

“Now you know how _I_ feel, you epic jerk. Like you think it’d be easy for us to find those requisition forms you hid.” When Carlos smiles back, Eli taps his arm, sleepily but imperatively. “Hey. If I don’t... well, if I can’t, tell the others they were great. _You_ were great. Night Vale is the most fun I’ve ever had, really. And I think... you should tell Cecil.” His eyes close as he trails off. “Tell him you...”

In the resulting silence Carlos swallows hard, then bends to gather him up. He braces for the weight, but the intern is an unexpectedly light burden.

As he steps into the portal, he glances back at Ben. The Secret Policeman hasn’t stirred. He’s breathing peacefully, like he’s just put his head down for a nap.

Time to worry about consequences later.

The void blossoms out around him like water.

 

_Carlos._

Not the Voice.

Something else.

Something that feels like a cloud of strange particles burning within him. Each tiny mote flashing with rage at its sudden demise. A fist letting go, a toxin flushed away, a miasma of black threat dissipated.

_Carlos. We’re not done with you. Don’t go far._

Fading.

_We’ll be waiting for you._

 

He struggles back to the surface of consciousness, heavily, blearily, like coming out from under anesthesia.

When did he stop walking and start falling? Or was the whole passage one long fall? He can’t remember.

He’s lying on his back, and there’s a pendulous shadow above him, a blurry object hanging over his face. He vaguely remembers the landing, if you could call it that, tumbling down gently onto a warm surface. Now the surface is cold.

He opens his eyes. The intruding object is still there. It jumps into sudden focus as soon as he realizes it’s the head of a pterodactyl.

_Oops._

Its beak is slightly open, its rows of teeth fastened onto a chunk of raw meat. Its breath is hideous. It rotates its head to fix him with a bright black stare, pupil dilating, feral.

Carlos closes his eyes again and waits for it to strike. Trying not to wonder what part of his body it’ll go for. How badly he’ll be crippled by the agony. If he’ll be able to fight back at all, let alone effectively.

Nothing happens.

He waits. Holds his breath.

More nothing.

Then, the scratching sound of the pterodactyl’s claws and the rustling of its odd feathery mantle as it steps past him, dragging its musty tail over his face. It regards the resulting fit of coughing with avian indifference. When Carlos dares to open one streaming eye, it’s already ignoring him. It tilts its head up. Swallows its bloody prize in two quick convulsive gulps. Then it unfolds its leathery wings in one brisk _flump_ , like someone shaking out a rug, and takes off.

He lets out the held breath all at once. Pulls it back in more slowly.

Out loud, “Eli? Are you here?”

Still nothing.

In the wake of the creature’s flight, he sees something lying on the ground near his outstretched hand. Rolls over to examine it.

It’s a discarded plastic safety cap, the kind used to seal bottles of prescription medication. No label, only a half-worn-away orange triangle printed on the top. Just a piece of trash. Odd in general, maybe, but not odd by Night Vale standards. So it can’t be the sight of it that’s making the back of his mind abruptly, superstitiously afraid. Can it?

Carlos gets cautiously to his feet.

He’s sharing his new location, wherever it is, with nothing but a skateboard that has been abandoned upside-down nearby, an old coyote skull, and a smooth sand-colored wall off to his right, decorated by a huge graffiti message in beautifully executed crimson bubble letters: _READ YOUR CONSTITUTION._ The second _I_ in _CONSTITUTION_ has been dotted with a realistic human heart, complete with artistically dripping blood. Wait, he’s seen that somewhere before.

Mission Grove Park, he realizes. Out at the east end, where the trees get spaced-apart and scraggy and finally give way to a paved playground. Yes, there’s the playground equipment, casting a puzzle of neat shadows onto the concrete. He’s beside the ancient building that used to house the office of the park service, before most of their funding got diverted to the drawbridge construction project.

Except the building is a different _shape._ Carlos is pretty sure it didn’t have a belltower before. And why would the nearby monkey bars be festooned in smaller bells? The wind fidgets with them, making tiny, eerie cascades of sound.

The air smells wrong, too. Not the uniquely Night Vale smell that everyone seems to experience differently (for Carlos it’s petrichor, creosote, rain on its way, that sharp scent that clings to your fingers after you’ve been touching something metallic). Not that smell, not the smell of home. No, it smells of —

His train of thought crumbles off. There are footsteps behind him. And something dark moving on the wall.

A shadow.

 

When he turns, he’s unconsciously expecting to see the figure from his dream looming over him, graceful and deadly as a stalking cat.

Instead, he meets the eyes of a teenage girl, gleaming bright and almost feverish through a curtain of loose brown hair. She looks so frightened that Carlos tries to suppress his start of surprise. Too late. He puts a hand out to her when she flinches back, in a gesture he intends to be reassuring.

His intent obviously hasn’t come through. The girl puts her head down and just charges at him, as if he’d pulled out a weapon. _Smart,_ he has to admit, as the collision abruptly drives the breath from his lungs.

“Who _are_ you?” she’s almost sobbing. “Did _you_ do this? Where’s your gross suitcase thing, huh? Not so tough right up close, are you?”

She shoves him back and he stumbles against the wall, already knocked off-balance by the first blow. Seams of watering light at the edges of his vision as he gasps for breath. A small fist hits him in the ribs.

“ _Talk_ to me, you creep! What did you do? What the fuck did you do?”

“Wait!” he manages, catching her wrist as she aims again. “Just hang on. I’m not here to hurt you, I promise!”

She stills, breathing as hard as he is, jaw set. He lets go immediately, raising his hands to shoulder level, palms-out _I’m harmless_ gesture, and stays where he is. She rubs her wrist, a bit theatrically, steps back, and then runs both hands through her hair, pulling it back from her face.

Carlos gingerly lowers his hands. “Okay. Deep breaths. Now, what’s wrong? What am I supposed to have done?”

“Look around, genius!” She waves an arm, indicating the whole town. That voice is familiar, and so is her clothing — an off-brand vintage style, one he associates with college campuses and hipster bars. “All the people I’ve seen today are dead, and that’s like way too high a percentage for anything that isn’t a major holiday or any of the Forbidden Calendar moons, and there are giant dinosaurs flying around and one of them tried to eat my dog. I don’t know where _you’re_ from, but around here we don’t normally _have_ dinosaurs, okay?”

Carlos puts an experimental hand to his ribs. More bruises. “But, if you’ve seen the pterodactyls, why are you still out here?”

The girl tries to glare at him haughtily, but her face crumples halfway through and she presses her hands to her cheeks, as if she can prevent tears from overflowing just by contact. “Because,” she chokes, “my — my dad’s out here somewhere, he went to a PTA meeting and he didn’t come _back_ and I have to find him.”

_Oh._

_Now_ he remembers.

“Your dad is Steve Carlsberg, isn’t he? And you’re Michaela. Right?”

She sniffs and scrubs briskly at her face, rallying again. “So whatever, you know my name. Doesn’t mean you’re not an interloper.”

“I’m not an interloper. Really. I mean, not anymore. Your dad would remember me, I think. My name’s Carlos.”

“Ohhh, you’re the _scientist.”_

“Yeah, that’s me.” He tries a smile, hoping she won’t say anything about his hair.

She shakes her head instead, as if to rid herself of a persistent image. “I thought you were that guy in the tan jacket. You know the one? The guy whose face nobody can remember. Rgh!” Shivering. “Worse than Bloody Mary. At least with her you can always sacrifice a doll or something and she’ll leave you alone. But the tan jacket dude, what kind of sacrifice would _he_ want?”

Carlos definitely doesn’t want to think too hard about that. “I have no idea. Did you — was he here?”

“I think he was following me. I think he _had_ something, something he wanted to show me, or — no, I can’t remember. I was scared. And you’ve got a long coat too, and it’s sort of getting dark,” defensively. “I can’t tell what color it is under all that blood and dirt. It looks sort of tan, anyway.”

“Oh, I see. I’m sorry I scared you.”

Michaela blinks. “Uh, that’s okay. I’m sorry I hit you. Just, don’t tell me to go home. I know what I’m doing, I get really good grades on my apocalypse drills. Besides, I should be able to do what I want, I’m sixteen.”

Carlos raises an eyebrow.

“Okay, _fine,_ fourteen,” she says, crossing her arms. “Jeez, it might as well be Valentine’s Day out here, and I run into the one grownup who’s alive to give me shit for my curfew. Wait, what are you doing out here, anyway?”

“Saving Night Vale,” he says. “I think.”

Michaela gives him a dubious once-over. “Oh yeah?” At his nod, “Well maybe next time, you should start by _not_ losing a fight to a teenage girl.”

 

This isn’t quite the Night Vale he knows.

These are the same buildings, in the same places, but the architecture is more ornate, the Mediterranean influence more pronounced. There are tiled red roofs, and elaborately barred windows, and colonies of trailing purple vines mapping out the areas where the shade lingers longest during the day. It’s lovely and unsettling, but it’s not quite home. And he still can’t place the smell on the air.

They don’t meet anything, or anyone, on foot. Good sign, as far as Carlos is concerned, because it means people are staying hidden. There’s blood in the street and other evidence of the dinosaur attacks — overturned bins, smashed awnings, spilled possessions, spark-struck glints of metal where hanging garlands of bells have been severed from the lampposts.

The uneven, desultory chiming and chinging of more bells floats on the air, a serene, suburban-backyard sound. It ought to be charming. It isn’t.

They try to stay under what small cover there is on the way up Main Street toward the Recreation Center. On the way, Michaela shows Carlos the screen of her phone, a series of increasingly frantic texts with no response, scrolling back up to reveal her father’s last message: _at meeting, rec center big Room, a bit late, theyre loving the Scones._

Carlos’s offer of help didn’t meet with enthusiasm, but the temptation to trust an adult has overcome her initial fear. Mostly. She’s obviously prepared to shake off his supervision the moment she suspects him of trying to restrain her for her own safety. He could do it anyway, if he’s willing to be ruthless about it, but he doesn’t want to hurt her in the process.

Besides, the faster he finds Eli, the better.

The sky has scorched toward sunset, orange-red at one pole of the horizon, twilight turning slowly purple at the other. Ten or eleven pterodactyls in a group (do you call it a brood? a squadron? a plague? what _is_ the proper collective noun for pterodactyls?) are drifting in lazy formation near the water tower. Too far away, or too well-fed, to chase down wandering prey. Like the one that investigated him earlier. Feeling guilty, Carlos wishes them full bellies and deep sleep.

He dials through as many radio frequencies as his handheld can receive. At first, nothing. Nothing, capitalized, full stop. Not the music of the spheres, not canned ads for imaginary corn, not imaginary ads for canned corn, not even the spooky-sweet robot voice of WZZZ, reciting its nonsensical series of numbers. Just bands of static broken up by silence.

Then he realizes that one of those static bands has a familiar pattern.

Deadly familiar.

NVCR is on the air after all, but it’s being jammed. Inside his head. But when that happened before, it was caused by the eldritch powers of Brad Josephson. (Say hello to Night Vale’s _other_ contestant on Who Wants to Be a Psychic Nutcase, Carlos, have you got some competition this time!) Except Brad is dead. Very dead. Maybe he didn’t exactly see it happen, but he did see what was left afterward. Brad has been dead for _months._

Unless he hasn’t.

Carlos turns the situation over in his mind. Michaela doesn’t remember him. It makes sense. The encounter he recalls — when she astonished him by delivering a message she claimed came from himself — must be still in her future. Or her past, experienced out of sequence. Funny that time travel has never occurred to him as a potential explanation for that message, not even as a joke.

So is this the past? Has the hole he stepped through taken him to a different time? Or an alternate reality? Both?

Should he tell her? No, Carlos decides, not yet. He needs to understand more about how time travel even works before he tries to convince a skeptical teenager they’ve met before. She might even read it as some sort of predatory trick on his part, and he wouldn’t blame her.

He turns briefly to look down at her small, intent profile, bracing inwardly against a wave of protective feeling. If it’s true that he got her into this, even indirectly, then he’s damn well going to get her back out. Preferably in one piece.

“Before you ask,” she says, curling her fingers around the candy-pink straps of her backpack, “my mom isn’t going to miss me at dinner, as she’s been dead for two years and probably has better things to do than check on me every five minutes. Unless the afterlife is really just nothingness, which means she doesn’t have to do anything at all. Wouldn’t that be nice, not to have to do anything at all? You wouldn’t even be bored, since you wouldn’t have a mind to be bored with.”

Carlos puts aside this ontological dilemma. Instead, gently, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Are you?” She risks a glance at him, then returns her gaze to the ground in front of her, kicking at a discarded soda can. “It’s whatever. I guess. What are _your_ parents like, then? Are they dead, too?”

“Yeah. My dad was in an accident, when I was really small. I barely remember him.”

“And your mom?”

“Cancer.” Carlos’s voice tries to slip out of his grasp,  crack like a dropped plate, the way it does every time.

“What kind of cancer?” Michaela skips up onto the curb in front of the Rec Center, carefully not looking at him.

“Something called an astrocytoma.” Now he sounds less shaky, simply stating a fact. “That means —”

“— a brain tumor, yeah, I know.” She smiles a little at his startled reaction. “I wanna be pre-med someday,” with the air of a confession. “So I _read._ I read medical textbooks, even. Restricted section medical textbooks, the kind they don’t let you take off the premises at the Library. Some of them are even probably cursed. So maybe you can stop looking at me like I’m just a kid now?”

He blinks. “I’m sorry. So you’re going to be a doctor?”

“Surgeon,” she corrects, straightening with the return of a touchy adolescent pride. “There’s an internship you can get at the hospital here in Night Vale, it’s actually really sweet. They don’t even take any limbs or organs you’re gonna need for your career. Might even get away with a gallbladder as tribute, if mine doesn’t go bad before I’m eighteen. But the entrance requirements are crispy-fried hell on a stick.”

“Stiff competition?” Carlos asks, sympathetically.

“Oh, you have no idea,” and she flips her hair back, beginning to gather it up into a businesslike knot. “I study all the time now. I haven’t had a break in months.” With telltale irony, “I’ve been thinking I’d die of not having a life if something interesting didn’t happen.”

 

The devastation is even more obvious inside the Rec Center.

Michaela and Carlos make their way through a hallway full of debris, climbing past an overturned bank of metal lockers and avoiding bloodstains on the floor.

Two bodies lie mangled near the auditorium access doors. Michaela makes a soft hurt sound when she sees them, but she doesn’t shrink back. There’s no need to check their pulses — nobody could have survived such massive wounds — but Carlos kneels down anyway. Tries to make out their features.

Unrecognizable. Neither can be Steve, though, unless he’s changed a lot since Carlos saw him last. No, both of these bodies probably belonged to women. A smashed pair of glasses lies between them, beside a ripped leather purse, and that gives Carlos a new heaviness in his bones. Secondhand grief, like the dues of passing a graveyard. Not their lucky day at all.

He’s silent for a moment. All the strange abilities he’s discovered in himself since coming to Night Vale, and he still can’t undo what happened here, these two deaths like hitting a wall. At least, he hopes it was that sudden. He doesn’t feel talented at all right now, scientifically or otherwise.

“You’re regretting not kidnapping me and dragging me off to the hospital, or a bunker, or something, aren’t you?” Michaela says finally.

Carlos gets back to his feet. Steadies himself. “Do you recognize them?”

“I’ve seen them around. I think the one with the blue tennis shoes works at my school. I mean. Worked.” She grimaces expressively up at him. “We’re going to have to step over them, aren’t we?”

“Yes.”

“The universe totally _sucks_ sometimes.”

“Yes.”

“You wanna bail? I won’t tell anyone.”

“No.”

“You’re absolutely cross-your-heart positive? Hope to die without screaming?”

“Cross my heart,” says Carlos, gravely.

“Okay.” Michaela takes a deep breath. “Let’s do it fast, then,” holding out her free hand.

He takes it. Her small palm is damp and slippery. He doesn’t let go, even after they’ve clambered awkwardly past the grisly heap in the doorway and gained the auditorium hall.

 

Six steps in they stop.

The room is too empty.

It’s Michaela who looks first, pulls on Carlos’s hand to warn him, but he already knows. Having a weapon pointed at your back is a uniquely vulnerable feeling, and even without picking up on the whisper of footsteps on the carpet behind them, he’d recognize it. He’d recognize it in his sleep.

The man aiming the gun has a rugged, Hollywood-handsome face that looks like it was stamped out from a mold. It’s impossible to tell how old he is. He’s wearing a crisp, squared-off black suit with discreet shoulder pads, immaculate black loafers, and a red silk tie like a trail of blood. Carlos has never seen him before.

They stare at each other, locked into a shared, magnetic gaze like gunslingers in an empty town square, and then the stranger smiles, a too-wide but genuinely pleased smile of recognition. Perfect teeth. The inside of his mouth stained with some black substance.

“Carlos! Wow, it’s been so long! I should have known you’d be here!”

 

_Fuck._

For a moment Carlos really believes that he’s got it wrong, that he _has_ seen this man somewhere before and just doesn’t remember him. But where? New York? Providence? Miami? That one town in the middle of nowhere in Nevada, where someone with a suit and a Marlon Brando hairstyle would’ve stuck out like a sore thumb?

Memory Lane?

A heavy, slow feeling is stealing into his limbs, pressing lazily down on him like contentment, like terror. He needs to say something. He needs to say something fast, even if it’s just that he doesn’t understand. He tries. No use; his throat is a dry socket. He manages a nod. Closes his eyes for a moment. It’s risky, but he needs that second of brittle darkness to reassume his old armor.

He can do this. He survived the last time somebody thought they recognized him under the most inconvenient possible circumstances. Of course, _that_ somebody was an enormous, fire-breathing five-headed dragon. Carlos hopes this will be easier.

Vain hope. The stranger is smiling even more widely, if that’s actually possible. Maybe it isn’t, and he’s distorting physical reality somehow. That’s definitely the edge of a paranormal energy field crackling against Carlos’s senses. He doesn’t even need to check his PF reader to feel the pressure.

The gun isn’t pointed at him anymore. That should be a relief. It isn’t.

“Don’t you remember me? Daniel, from Acquisitions! We had that really great talk at the office party a few months ago?”

“Right. Daniel.” Carlos attempts to sound just as pleased. “How — how have you been?” He lets go of Michaela to return an enthusiastic handshake, aware of her renewed fear and suspicion without having to look.

“Oh, can’t complain, can’t complain. I got that promotion, you know? New office and everything. Assistant to the Vice Prez herself!”

“Uh, wow, congratulations!”

“Thank you.” Daniel beams. “I’m Volunteer Coordinator for this particular operation. Should’ve known you’d be around, didn’t you work on it over there in R&D? Here, come with me, I’ll give you the tour! You have to see how well we’re doing.”

It makes him feel sick, but he’s caught on. This is some kind of company operation. He’s been offered work like this before. Put aside his ethical convictions for forty hours a week, and he could be richer than Marcus Vanston in no time at all. Something about his peculiar field of study whets corporate appetites. Paranormal energy reduced from a frightening and lovely force of nature to a human tool. Or a weapon.

He’s always said no, even during the periods when his obsession with finding Night Vale left him broke and exhausted. Never once considered saying yes.

And now some other Carlos has.

That’s it. That’s _it._ Daniel must think he’s talking to _this_ world’s Carlos, an alternate-universe Carlos, a Carlos who has done who knows what, in pursuit of some agenda he can’t imagine. Is this who Hiram McDaniels also assumed him to be? Not some kind of vague, yet menacing, government agent, not a criminal with a fluke paranormal talent, but _himself?_ A _different_ self?

He has to take a breath to ward off the sick feeling. Once he’s steady enough to be convincing, “Yeah, let’s do it.”

“Excellent!” and Daniel turns to lead them out of the auditorium. “We’ve got some great specimens left for the second field test. I feel like my talents are really being _appreciated_ today.”

Michaela grabs Carlos’s hand again. The pressure of her fingers is panic-tight: _What are you doing?_

He squeezes back, hoping to reassure her: _Trust me._

 

They ford a different section of the blood-spattered hallway and turn into a conference room, where a table has been upended and shoved against one wall. There’s a small, frightened crowd of people gathered around the remaining chairs, , and two more lying on the floor.

One of them is Eli.

For a horrible moment Carlos thinks he’s lost Eli after all, but then he sees the intern’s skinny ribs heaving with a shuddering series of breaths. Still unconscious — and trapped in whatever bizarre game Daniel’s involved in — but alive. The moment the relief hits him, Michaela slips free of his hand and darts past Daniel to kneel over the other unconscious figure.

“Dad? Are you all right?” She folds aside the puffy collar of Steve’s sport jacket to check his pulse, takes a deep breath, and then turns on Daniel. “What did you do to him? Do you know he has a heart condition?”

“Well, you know, we can’t be legally responsible for every little thing, especially if the volunteers don’t put it on their paperwork,” Daniel says in a calm, reasonable tone. “If they’re already unconscious before we even get there, they’re clearly so enthusiastic that they _want_ to waive all their rights. Isn’t that how everyone does it?”

Michaela says nothing, but sweeps a gaze of scorching contempt from Daniel to Carlos to the trembling lookers-on.

Grasping after the scarred sense-memory of his own teenage defiance, Carlos lets himself drop completely into his role. It’s frighteningly easy. He looks critically down at the faces of Eli and Steve, mentally cataloguing them as if they’re strangers. Stepping into the awkward gap, “These are the specimens you mentioned? They don’t look like much.”

Daniel laughs. “Well, those pteranodons were hungrier than we expected. Went right through all the other meat we left for them.”

That sick feeling in Carlos’s stomach is getting worse. With an attempt at lightness, “Pterodactyls, not pteranodons. Two different species, from different geological eras, actually.”

“They’re all Greek to me.” Daniel’s cheer is unpunctured. “Or, I mean, they’re all giant dinosaurs. But it doesn’t matter, R&D can make anything useful, if we really want to. That’s what being a scientist is for, isn’t it?”

Before Carlos can think of a reply, the conference room door is pushed open again to admit three people in gas masks and yellow bodysuits, followed by a woman with smooth, caramel-colored hair, wearing an iron pendant of some kind. Carlos has trouble focusing on it, as if it repels his gaze, and a chill of familiarity runs cold fingers up his spine.

“Oh! Good, you’re all here,” she says brightly. “Daniel, open that portal back up for me, will you? And you — oh dear, I’m sorry, what’s your name again? In the lab coat.”

“Carlos.”

“Oh, uh, yes.” She pushes her sunglasses up from her face and tosses him a smile like a camera flash. Her eyes are dark, pupils dilated with only a thin frame of white showing around them. Her teeth are small, sharp, like those of a biting animal. “Carlos. Right. I keep forgetting. You can take notes.”

Carlos just nods. His hands are steady as he thumbs his phone out of his pocket. Pretends to fumble over his passcode. Really he’s just looking at the time display — 4:72 — and wondering if he really has gone off the deep end. Would a psychotic episode feel like a regular Friday at this point? He’s starting to suspect it would.

The Vice President, if that’s who she is, has serenely dismissed him from her mind. “Go ahead, Daniel.”

“Yes, ma’am!”

Daniel takes out a small metal ring from the pocket of his suit. It gleams as he holds it up, a bright point of focus in the dimly lit room. Carlos isn’t close enough to make out the letters stamped into the inside of the band, but the shape stamped into the outside is simple enough. An orange letter _S_ , enclosed in a triangle. A symbol Carlos is positive he’s seen before.

Shit. He’s got to stop this.

He edges closer.

Daniel turns and throws the ring at the wall. Something that looks like smoke or steam trails after it, tracing the lazy, shallow arc of its trajectory through the air. Then reality peels back at the impact, the material of the wall eaten away all at once by the whirlpool spin of another portal.

Fascinated, Carlos can see ripples of light expanding from the point where the ring hit. This portal is bigger, even more hungry, than the one he stepped through to get here, the edges of it expanding at a slow but still visible rate. The screams drifting out of it are louder.

No, wait. Not louder. Just amplified, reinforced, by the screams of the people in the room.

Daniel claps his hands excitedly together. The Vice President says something to one of her gas-masked employees. Carlos can’t hear it, because the screams have solidified into some kind of chant. On the floor, Eli stirs; his hand twitches a tiny bit in the every-color-and-no-color glow of the hole in the air.

Time to worry about consequences later.

Carlos steps confidently up to Daniel’s side. Through one cupped hand, “Hey, this is really impressive,” and as the man in the suit responds with another too-wide smile, he drops his act. Twists away the gun.

The smile splits wider.

The blade comes out as if it’s part of Daniel’s hand, aimed cunningly at Carlos’s kidneys. He evades it by millimeters. Tries the same tactic he used on the Secret Policeman earlier, turning Daniel’s step forward into a trip. This time it works properly. The knife goes flying, handleless and stained with something oily. Daniel’s body hits the floor with a strangely heavy _thud_ , as if he’s somehow got plate armor concealed under his clothing.

Carlos doesn’t have time to stop to investigate this. It’s enough that Daniel seems momentarily stunned.

He points the gun at the woman in the sunglasses. Shifts into the old, well-known and well-hated position. Aims for center mass.

Takes the safety off.

He expects fury, but instead the Vice President’s eyes go wide with fear and her posture unlocks. “Now, now, don’t be _hasty_ , uh — whatever your name is. Put that gun down. I have the key to the break room, isn’t that what you need right now? Lunch? Maybe a break for prayer? Uh — uh, no, wait — it — it’s not _on_ me, it’s in my office. You’ll never find it without my help. _Put it down._ ”

Carlos raises his voice to be heard over the remnants of the chanting. “You want to help me? Let us go.”

She sputters with as much astonishment as anger, “This is _insubordination!”_

“No shit,” Michaela says. She’s managed to pull a still-unconscious Eli half to his feet. Her face is drawn. She jerks her head toward the portal. “Carlos, come on, we’re getting out of here.”

“You’ll report for a disciplinary hearing tomorrow —”

He holds her gaze. Flips the gun up to point ceilingward and squeezes the trigger. The shot reverberates in the walls, hums at Carlos’s bones and chuckles in the mouth of the portal. They all wince away from the sound and the sudden shower of drop-ceiling tiles and plaster.

“Now!” he yells.

Five breaths — _one,_ he’s hauling Steve upright like a sleepwalker — _two_ , the stripped syllables of the chant are dissolving into a confused uproar — _three,_ the hall doors slam open with more suits, more guns, on the other side — _four_ , reaching out his hand to catch Michaela’s shoulder as she stumbles under the burden of Eli’s weight — _five,_ spilling out through the portal, breaking some viscous membrane like a curtain and tumbling out into nothingness.

 

Nothingness is hard to withstand.

But Carlos braces for it better this time. Only a gap. A short trip. A horizonless, directionless fall. A held breath. An absence.

This time there is only himself.

  
  


( _to be continued_ )

**Author's Note:**

> Dear readers, goddamn I hate to do this, but I have to tell you that although this series is still my most beloved fan story and I absolutely plan to continue it, I have to take a break from everything. Be assured I'm not dead, even if I won't be around to answer comments for a while.
> 
> (Dear Ysabet, your email is broken. Please look at your filters, or try emailing weareallstillhere (at) gmail instead.)
> 
> Oh! I almost forgot! I wrote a poetry book! [It's called THE YEAR I ESCAPED and if you miss my writing, you can get it on Amazon.](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1980277028)


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